Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

municipal particularism.” Its “rise and decline,” he continued, “were to a large extent determined
by political factors.” 34 Of cardinal importance was the rift between immigrants from the southern
Netherlands and native northerners. The former tended to be strict Calvinists, sympathetic to the
Counter-Remonstrants in the great political and religious schism of the 1610s, monarchists, and
in favor of continuing the war against Spain. The latter, by contrast, favored the Arminian cause,
promoted urban and provincial liberties, and were satisfied to let go of any territorial claim to the
south. As Johan Elias showed long ago, the fall of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1577-1619) and
the triumph of the Counter-Remonstrants in 1619 created a political constellation extremely
favorable to the WIC, and many of the company's early directors were in fact southerners from
Antwerp. 35 However, with the rise of the Libertine party in the late 1620s, and especially the
Holland-born brothers Cornelis (1592-1654) and Andries Bicker (1586-1652), the city of
Amsterdam became hostile to the company. Van Hoboken concludes that the city’s opposition to
rescuing Brazil, which the Bickers continued to view as a project of “Brabanters and Walloons,”
was decisive. 36 Ideology and faction thus bore the greatest responsibility for the company's
collapse.
Van Hoboken's interpretation elicited a swift reaction from the economic historian J. G.
van Dillen, who argued that, although southerners and the Counter-Remonstrant faction played
an important role in the early years, this was hardly the case by the 1630s and 1640s. 37 The main
troubles lay in the company's chronic financial situation, which Cornelis Bicker—who reportedly
sold all his shares in 1629, at the height of the market—foresaw earlier than most. In particular,
34 W. J. van Hoboken, “The Dutch West India Company; the Political Background of Its Rise and Decline,” in
Britain and the Netherlands: Papers Delivered to the Oxford-Netherlands Historical Conference, 1959, ed. J. S.
Bromley and E. H. Kossman (London: Chatto & Windus, 1960), 41–61.42.
35 Johan E. Elias, Geschiedenis van het Amsterdamsche Regentenpatriciaat (’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff,
1923). See also Jan den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
36 Van Hoboken, “The Dutch West India Company; the Political Background of Its Rise and Decline,” 60.
37 J. G. van Dillen, “De West-Indische Compagnie, het Calvinism en de Politiek,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 74
(1961): 145–171.
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